All of these (limited wars, block alliances, binding treaties ala the UP, more sophisticated analysis of when to go to war and taking actual outcomes into effect when assessing the progress of wars) are really very nice ideas that I would naively assume to be reasonable to implement. However, nobody's done them, and that leads me to expect that it's actually a good deal more difficult than it would appear to the casual observer.

The fact is that this game has the latest iteration of (basically) the same diplomacy options we've had since Civilization-- Ally, go to war, trade goods. It's clearly more sophisticated than any of its predecessors, and a commendable addition to the field-- even if it's not a revolutionary transformation.

People have been asking for more sophisticated Diplomacy since DL first came out. It's been getting better, but other things like graphics and other features always get the no.1 spots on the Dev-to-do-list.

Um come on it's not rocket science. All it would need to do is keep track of say the last 10-20 battles with each race in the last x weeks. If it sees that it is losing 80% of the time, it should :

1) Rethink ship design. For each of those battles the key element of why it lost could be recorded. (out-numbered, too weak offensive, thier defense too good, your defense too weak, ...)

2) Rethink tech choices based on above. Face it, the AI doesn't use defense correctly, or prioritize researching it.

3) Consider upgrading ships to better design.

4) Consider peace if it doesn't make any progress.

The reality is the AI does not design good ships. It still for the most part designs hords of crappy ships, and on top of that it uses a completely flawed calculation of military power.

It is completely pathetic how the turn your power is more than them, they will almost always take a peace deal.

I would assume that if you wanted to do this, you would define a war-status variable, and modify it depending on the outcome of battles during the war (say, by reducing it in value by the cost of everything the enemy destroys and increasing it by the value of everything you capture or destroy from your enemy--- or possibly setting it to the ratio of the former to the latter). You probably wouldn't want to make it the sole defining factor, but at least the computer would know when it's getting its butt kicked.

While wholly agreeing with you in principle, I think you're going to want to take the scale of victories into account as well. Losing a couple freighters or scout ships needs to count less than losing a major planet.

The AI should calculate military power not only based on ship's power, but strategy efficiency. If, during the war, it has lost ships in a 10:1 ratio against you, then it should evaluate your military strenght 10 times than it actually is.

That way, the computer will actually compute your strategic genius when considering if to go in a war or not. Makes me think of Rome's reputation in the Mediterranian.


Also, I already suggested that, for the computer to stage a war, it should do it in that order:

1) Decide that it will go to war. It will begin a military build-up, and the computer will have to have an agenda (capture planets X, Y and Z in priority, destroy starbases A B and D). It should have a PREPARED STRATEGY, and have some sort of priority evaluation that will allow the computer to stray out of this prepared strategy only is better targets of opportunity present themselves (and still, the computer should evaluate the value of said target of opportunity, compared to sticking to it's actual strategy)

2) The computer should deploy and concentrate it's fleet in order to achieve the previously agenda

3) The computer NOW declare war, and will strike within 2 weeks it's main targets. The computer still should have a valid strategy of offense, and probably settle for what it just won if he could not swallow anything larger. At the same time, the computer is supposed to have many fleets either tracking your fleets, or protecting it's assets.


I don't know how such programming be possible, 'cause I know nuts about programming. However, I do know that any dev who actually achieve such STRATEGIC artificial intelligence could actually be heralded as the one who will revolutionnise the strategy industry.

Well if that's what's confusing you, let me make it simple...

For the majority of the players, the current difficulty is fine. There is always a tradeoff between the complexity of game mechanics and the ability of the ai to exploit those mechanics, and the specific combination of those two elements is not obvious from a marketing point of view, especially when your vantage point is that of a hardcore gamer.

You should consider this before using strong language such as 'pathetic', or claim ignorance of the developers motives, or, as you did in an earlier thread, claim the game was in constant 'beta', or that they are leaving a complex ai challenge 'laying around'. Until you can cite a game that does this better, much of the tone of your posts will have an air of entitlment.

Civ Diplomacy? I always read Civ as A war not war system and I like that game.

And if we don't get that... then maybe at least multiplayer.

I kinda agree with both sides.

The AI is good, but it behaves quite stupidly. The AI shouldn't learn when to make peace but how to fight a war better. Right now, it fights with brute force, not strategic thinking. i.e. Send any ship that isn't meant to be guarding a planet fleeted into the player's core areas and engage. Masochistic is very easy and even though the AI gets more resources to work with, it uses those resources very badly. The single and only trick to beating higher difficulties is to manage your own resources better then the AI can waste theirs. The strategic element of the game is getting stale and only once in a while I get a game that I really enjoy.

It would be nice to have
a) the announcement of the agenda
4-5 weeks of negociations
c) vote on the topic

the b sequence is supposed to either:

1- Convince the other players to vote your way
2- Milk the #1 peoples for as money as they want to give you

Off course, like in SMAC, if you are #1, you could simply say: "Vote for me, or else..." (a) I will stop trading with you I'll smash your teeth so hard you won't know what happened

I know I'm coming off as dickey in these replies, but I guess what I'm looking for is a bit more empathy. I agree with a lot of the problems with the AI noted here, and I'd be all for making the AI more agressive (i.e. i'm a big proponent of diplomatic relations suffering as a result of holding an increased proportion of habitable planets, or having shown a high degree of tactical ability), but the devs have other priorities that aren't necessarily in line with mine. It's what I'd like, but it isn't what I expect to get.

Anyway, that's my piece...sorry for the lectures.